Gloves and winter accessories are the items that get worn hardest and washed least. Hats, scarves, and gloves absorb sweat, road salt, and skin oil all season, and most households put them away in April without cleaning them, which is how they come out in October smelling and misshapen.
Sort them by what they are made of
Winter accessories cover more materials than almost any other category of laundry, and they do not share a method.
Knitted wool and acrylic, meaning most hats, scarves, and mittens, are washable with care and are the largest group.
Leather gloves cannot be treated as laundry at all.
Insulated ski and snowboard gloves have a waterproof membrane, an insulation layer, and often a leather palm, which means three materials with conflicting requirements in one item.
Fleece and synthetic accessories are the easiest and most forgiving.
Down mittens follow the rules for down rather than the rules for gloves.
Work out which group you have before anything gets wet.
Knitted wool and acrylic
Wool felts, which means the fibre scales interlock permanently under heat, moisture, and agitation together. A wool hat through a normal wash comes out fitting a doll.
Hand wash in cool water with a wool-specific detergent. Never an enzyme detergent, because protease digests protein fibre and wool is protein.
Submerge, press gently, leave ten minutes, and rinse at the same temperature. Moving wool between different water temperatures contributes directly to felting.
Press the water out in a rolled towel. Never wring.
Dry flat, reshaped while damp. A wet knitted hat hung on a hook stretches into a bag shape and stays that way.
Acrylic is far more forgiving and can go in a machine in a mesh bag on cold and gentle, though it pills readily and should be washed inside out.
Insulated ski and snowboard gloves
These are the difficult ones, because the outer shell wants a technical wash, the insulation wants to be tumbled, and any leather panel wants neither.
Check for a removable liner first. Many gloves have one, and if yours do, the job becomes simple: wash the liner separately and clean the shell by hand.
For a glove with a leather palm, do not immerse it. Wipe the shell with a barely damp cloth and a little mild soap, then condition the leather afterwards.
For an all-synthetic insulated glove, hand wash in cool water with a technical wash, rinse thoroughly twice, press the water out, and air dry slowly with the fingers propped open so air reaches inside.
Never a dryer on high, which delaminates the membrane and cooks the insulation into clumps.
Drying takes days rather than hours, because the insulation holds water in the fingertips where no air reaches. Stand them upright, cuff down, and be patient.
Leather gloves
These are not laundry.
Wipe with a barely damp cloth. Never soak, which strips the oils and leaves the leather stiff and cracked as it dries.
If they get soaked in snow, dry them slowly at room temperature, away from any heat source, with a rolled cloth inside to hold the shape. Heat is what ruins wet leather permanently.
Condition them once a season with a leather conditioner while they are slightly damp.
The salt problem
Road salt is the specific enemy of winter accessories and it does more damage than dirt.
Salt crystals are abrasive, so a scarf or glove left salted grinds against its own fibres every time it flexes. Salt also holds moisture against the fibre and it leaves visible white tide marks on dark wool.
Rinse salt out in cool water as soon as practical rather than letting it dry in. On leather, wipe salt off the same day, since salt draws oil out of leather and leaves a permanent white bloom.
A cool soak with a splash of white vinegar dissolves salt marks on wool that plain water leaves behind.
Storage at the end of the season
Wash everything before it goes away, without exception. This is the rule that matters most.
Wool stored dirty is what moths look for. Larvae are drawn to body oil, sweat, and salt rather than to clean fibre, so a clean hat is far less attractive than a worn one.
Store completely dry, folded rather than hung, in a breathable bag rather than plastic.
Keep pairs together in a way that survives eight months. Losing one glove over a summer is the most common failure of the whole system.
The Colorado Springs part
Three local conditions matter here and they all point the same way.
The season is long. Winter accessories here are in daily use from October well into April, which is close to seven months rather than three. That is far more sweat, more salt, and more wear than a general guide assumes, and it argues for washing gloves and hats two or three times through the season rather than once at the end.
Road salt and magnesium chloride are applied heavily on Front Range roads, and both leave the white tide marks that people assume are permanent. They are not. They are salt, they dissolve in cool water, and a soak with a little vinegar removes them.
The very dry air is the compensating advantage and it is a real one. Knitted accessories laid flat here dry in half a day rather than two, which makes the hand-washing routine practical rather than aspirational. It also means insulated gloves, which are otherwise the slowest thing in the house to dry, get there in a reasonable time with a fan on them.
The altitude sun is a fourth, smaller factor. Ultraviolet fades dark wool and degrades any elastane in a glove cuff, so dry these in shade rather than on a sunny windowsill.
Where the bulky items get dried
Insulated gloves and thick knitwear need long, genuinely low heat and room to move, and a small domestic dryer offers neither.
The machines at our self-service laundry on South Circle Drive have the drum capacity for bulky items to tumble freely and real temperature control, which is what winter gear actually needs.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general garment care guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a fabric care guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
Gloves and winter accessories need sorting by material first, because wool, leather, insulated shells, and fleece share no method. Hand wash wool in cool water with a wool detergent and never an enzyme one, then dry flat and reshaped. Never immerse leather, and never dry wet leather near heat. Insulated gloves take days to dry and need the fingers propped open. Rinse road salt out early, since salt is abrasive and leaves white marks that vinegar removes. And wash everything before storing it, because moths are drawn to the body oil rather than the wool.
WaveMAX Colorado Springs is at 609 South Circle Drive, easy to reach from Colorado Springs and the surrounding area. If bulky winter gear needs room to dry, call us at 719-639-9013.